Dear You: Poems Through the Heart

By Red Penguin Books

Bringing together the pieces of over two dozen poets from across the globe, “Dear You–Poems Through The Heart” offers readers the opportunity to peek inside the minds and souls of the broken-hearted. While love may be written about in droves, perhaps we can take just a little bit more from the words we have to share on the other end of it.

Featuring the works of the following writers:

Shai Afsai

Leslie Arambula

Carol Alena Aronoff

Michael Artemis

B. A. Brittingham

Linda M. Crate

Candice Louisa Daquin

Jerri Hardesty

Janis Butler Holm

Debbie De Louise

Carella Keil

Kirstin Kochie

David Lange

Melody Lipford

Matt Martinek

Henry Vinicio Valerio Madriz

LaVern Spencer McCarthy

Lisa Diaz Meyer

Dion O'Reilly

Mary C. M. Phillips

Sally Quon

K.V. Raghupathi

Michelle Chermaine Ramos

N.E Salmon

Anna Sanderson

Myna Wallin

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Penguin Books
• Release date: Apr 2, 2023
• ISBN: 1637773870

Book preview

all I wanted was some fucking fruit

– Matt Martinek

And there you were, that bright angel face

ascending over the tops of the cantaloupes

I was inspecting so closely.

Startled is not the word.

I would have hidden behind the rotting bananas had I spotted you.

How do you speak after 15 years of nothingness, filled with only fantasy

and the fleeting glimpses of could-have-beens?

What do you say? I’m sorry? We would have been great together?

Do I need to tell you that I think about you all the time and pretend

you are my wife

and I am your husband

and we are the sexy couple on the crinkled postcard from Hawaii

that always falls from the fridge into the dog dish

because our magnets are crap?  

The worst possible thing happens…you give me a hug and I find out that

you wear that same hypnotic perfume from high school

I wished I would wake up to someday, maybe everyday.

We speak on unimportant things…our childhood school is now a parking lot,

how you’re making it work in Philly and I am doing wonderful back at home,

and all the while I am scoping out those tanned legs,

thinking of how well they would wrap around my waist.

You know, I know, but we stop just short of pure truth,

that awkward moment arriving when the words cease

and we speak only through our eyes, our cue

to retreat with the usual nod and well wishes.

You proceed to the checkout line, your front wheel 

on the grocery cart screeching horribly and wobbling,

just as they always do.

Your back being turned to me, I mouth the words

I love you in silence.

Melissa’s Poem

– Shai Afsai

Mom is scheduled to call

in about an hour.

I open a bottle of wine.

___

On the second date,

I express an opinion.

It’s over.

___

I meet up with three friends for cocktails,

just like the girls from Sex and the City –

except we’re not in New York, and I don’t like my friends.

___

Making the bed alone,

the sheets won’t stay in place.

But he never helped with that either.

___

Clearly the woman on the mat to my right

is convinced deodorant and yoga

are mutually exclusive.

___

He explains that women keep living longer

and men are dying younger.

I sleep with him anyway.

___

Now I have a thing for guys with beards –

but after a few weeks or a month, I push them to shave.

They do, and we break up soon after.

___

Driving back from my sister’s,

I remember:

I hated her even when we were kids.

___

He’s muscled, with arms covered in tattoos,

and tells me the more he looks like an ex-con,

the more women are drawn to him. I’m drawn.

___

He tells me he divorced his second wife after she allowed

his stepdaughter to buy a pet rabbit over his objections.

Somehow this makes sense to me.

___

He says he spent three months in the far east,

and that yoga changed his life.

I trick myself into believing I’ve met someone interesting.

___

He’s twelve years older. Before #MeToo, I’d have told women

he was my former high school teacher, just to get a reaction,

and half of them would’ve said, That’s hot!

___

Xanax inside

the white pharmacy bag –

no need to die now.

Outrageous Things I Will Not Do Today – after Cherie Hanson

– Sally Quon

I will not buy the twelve-dollar dress I found on-line,

all flounces and lace